Wednesday, July 30, 2008

It looks like this meeting was fruitful.An India paper headline says 'Treaty' signed. I think a bit strong.Quotes the San Jose Mercury News which says a deal was signed.The NASA Release 08-190 says representatives from space agencies considering participation inthe International Lunar Network (ILN)agreed on a statement of intent as a first step in planning.

We would like to see eight landers and only have money for four, so others are welcome.Since eight nations were represented, hopefully they will convince their powers to be that this is a good idea.

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. -- NASA's Lunar Science Institute at MoffettField, Calif., has announced its first international affiliatepartner for conducting lunar science activities. Canada's Universityof Western Ontario, London, Ontario, will represent the Canadianlunar science community as part of the newly established CanadianNetwork for Lunar Science and Exploration.snip---------------------------http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=26089http://www.uwo.ca/Read more.

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. -- NASA hosted a meeting of space agencies fromnine countries last week to discuss the next steps in the ongoingscientific exploration of the moon. The meeting laid the groundworkfor a new generation of lunar science.

Discussions, led by NASA Headquarters officials, were held at NASA'sLunar Science Institute, located at the Ames Research Center atMoffett Field, Calif. Representatives from space agencies in Canada,France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, theUnited Kingdom, and the United States attended the meeting. Duringthe meeting, attendees discussed cooperation on an internationalactivity called the International Lunar Network (ILN). The network isdesigned to gradually place 6-8 fixed or mobile science stations onthe lunar surface. The stations will form a second-generation roboticscience network to replace hardware left by the Apollo Program tostudy the moon's surface and interior.

NASA plans to place its first two ILN landers on the surface of themoon in 2013-14. The landers are being developed under the LunarPrecursor Robotic Program at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.Huntsville, Ala.

The ILN is supported by NASA's Science Mission Directorate at theagency's headquarters in Washington. It was created in response to a2007 report released by the National Research Council, which affirmedthat the moon offers "profound scientific value" and "lunaractivities apply to broad scientific and exploration concerns."

Representatives from space agencies considering participation in theILN agreed on a statement of intent as a first step in planning. Thestatement marked an expression of interest by the agencies to studyoptions for participating in a series of international lunarmissions. The goal is to form a network of missions that will benefitscientists worldwide.

"We are tremendously excited by the enthusiasm shown for the ILN andlunar science more broadly," said Jim Green, director of thePlanetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters. "This internationalactivity will greatly extend scientific knowledge of the moon in anumber of important areas."

The statement of intent does not completely define the ILN concept.The document leaves open the possibility for near and long-termevolution and implementation. Initially, participants intend toestablish potential landing sites, interoperable spectrum andcommunications standards, and a set of scientifically equivalent coreinstrumentation to carry out specific measurements.

"We are in a new era of lunar exploration," said Jim Adams, deputydirector of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters."Scientific coordination of the international armada of missionsbeing sent to the moon in the next decade will greatly leverage ourscientific capabilities, and perhaps even more importantly, developthe next generation of lunar scientists."

International participation in specific ILN activities will beestablished by appropriate international agreements. Additionalparticipants may join in the future when they are programmaticallyand financially ready. Participation in the ILN could include thecontribution of landers, orbiters, instrumentation, or othersignificant infrastructure, such as ground segment elements or powersupplies for surviving the lunar night.

In hopes of discovering clues to the origin of life on Earth, the United States and eight other nations signed a landmark agreement at NASA's Ames Research Center this week that scientists hope will lay the groundwork for a new generation of lunar exploration and science.

Unlike the all-American Apollo program, the new agreement sees a multinational fleet of robot spacecraft returning to the moon in coming years, with the maturing space programs of countries like India, Germany and South Korea playing key roles in an effort that ultimately would lead to the return of astronauts.

"It's sort of like the beginning of a beautiful friendship, like at the end of 'Casablanca,' " James Green, director of NASA's planetary science division, said at Moffett Field this week.

"Many of these countries are quite interested in the manned program. They want to provide astronauts to be the first Canadian or the first Italian or the first French man or French woman on the moon."

NASA and the eight other countries - Canada, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Britain and France - plan to formally announce the agreement Tuesday. The multinational agreement capped a momentous week at Ames, including the largest NASA science conference purely devoted to the moon since the 1970s.

A multinational moon effort would allow NASA to share costs. The United States budgeted money for four landers, but scientists want up to eight spacecraft on the surface. Representative of the space and science agencies of the nine countries spent Thursday at Moffett Field working on a plan to launch lunar landers and orbiters, establishing a network to monitor the moon's seismic activity that would stretch from the poles to the far side.

Do you love photos of space, rockets, astronauts, launches, all the hardware, and the galaxy? Then take a look at NASA's newest venture: nasaimages. org It's newly-opened, and I've added it to my Super 7 links on the left.

In 2007, NASA entered into a Space Act agreement with the Internet Archive to create this incredible image library. The project, which is not funded by tax dollars, is right now supported by a grant from the Kahle-Austin Foundation.

When you land on the home page, you'll find the black void of space, looking back at Earth. Superimposed are four interactive photos representing the major categories: Universe, Solar System, Earth, and Astronauts.

At the bottom of the page is a an easy, interactive banner with multple pop-up min-screens. You can browse backwards through the history of the space program, or take a tour of the Solar System. The site is easy to navigate.

This is written by a friend of mine, an ex-PIO (Public Information Officer) who worked at NASA. After you read about NASA's Image Collections, scroll to the bottom ("Welcome To Space News at The Examiner") and click on "Read More". Amazing stuff!

I was searching through the NASA Image Collections web site over the weekend and it's nothing short of amazing. Enjoy!

POSTED July 28, 10:58 AM Do you love photos of space, rockets, astronauts, launches, all the hardware, and the galaxy? Then take a look at NASA's newest venture: nasaimages. org It's newly-opened, and I've added it to my Super 7 links on the left....snip==============================================================

Thursday, July 24, 2008

When you stand under a curtain of the Northern Lights having just come out of the movie, The Thing, while on temporary duty in Keflavik Island, it can make for some strange feelings that make the hair on the back of your neck rise.- LRK -

Now if the high speed protons are aiming at Earth and the high speed electrons are heading out to space, and it was a Full Moon, and this happens, shouldn't I be able to pick up this energy on the Moon with a grid of antennas and do some energy storage, hmmm, hmmm. I wonder what other phenomena we will observe while looking Earthward from the Moon?- LRK -

Just thinking out loud, but might there be some sort of energy signature generated by a metal asteroid hurling towards us in the path of our Sun's solar wind? Wouldn't it be nice to have more ways to detect those asteroids sneaking up on us in the glare of the Sun? And if you were on the Moon, could you add another data point and get some triangulation going. And while we are on a role, put some satellites at Sun - Earth L4 and L5 and map what is heading towards Earth. Just thinking out loud. Hmmm.- LRK -

Some of you do have kids going through college that will help make it happen, yes? Nod your head yes. :-)And if they are afraid of heights, well then they can help develop habitats in our oceans or practice going to the Moon while under the sea.NEEMO- LRK -

A bit off topic but just got back from spending a week with my mom and celebrating her 98th birthday. She is a little ticked off that she has to use a walker and the lady that road down the elevator with us is 101 and goes jogging. Mom says she is slowing down. I hope I was passed some of those genes and I am just slowing down at 98. Will need all the time I can get to see some of the use of space develop as I will be 71 at the end of the year. - LRK -

That's the conclusion of researchers studying data from NASA's five THEMIS spacecraft. The gigantic bullets, they say, are launched by explosions 1/3rd of the way to the Moon and when they hit Earth—wow. The impacts spark colorful outbursts of Northern Lights called "substorms."

"We have discovered what makes the Northern Lights dance," declares UCLA physicist Vassilis Angelopoulos, principal investigator of the THEMIS mission. The findings appear online in the July 24 issue of Science Express and in print August 14 in the journal Science.

The THEMIS fleet was launched in February 2007 to unravel the mystery of substorms, which have long puzzled observers with their unpredictable eruptions of light and color. The spacecraft wouldn't merely observe substorms from afar; they would actually plunge into the tempest using onboard sensors to measure particles and fields. Mission scientists hoped this in situ approach would allow them to figure out what caused substorms--and they were right.

The discovery came on what began as a quiet day, Feb 26, 2008. Arctic skies were dark and Earth's magnetic field was still. High above the planet, the five THEMIS satellites had just arranged themselves in a line down the middle of Earth's magnetotail—a million kilometer long tail of magnetism pulled into space by the action of the solar wind.

NASA's Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms (THEMIS) aims to resolve one of the oldest mysteries in space physics, namely to determine what physical process in near-Earth space initiates the violent eruptions of the aurora that occur during substorms in the Earth's magnetosphere.

THEMIS is a 2-year mission consisting of 5 identical probes that will study the violent colorful eruptions of Auroras.

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Sometimes we comment that NASA is not going and doing everything we would like.You know, go to the Moon, go to Mars, and why not the Stars.

Money.

Still, there are a number of things going on now and more planned forthe future.I copied the list of Current Missions below and I think you will seethat quite a bit is going on.Still, you say, not enough.Looks like one needs to speak to their representatives in Congress ifyou are in the USA.With all the talk of a down turn in the economy sometimes missions get canceled.Let us hope folks can see the benefit and provide the funds to carry on.- LRK -

snip==============================================================Just because I am lax in probing the World of the Internet doesn'tmean there aren't things going on.Do check out the NASA Current Missions page to see that much indeed ishappening.- LRK -

Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM)http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/aim/index.htmlAIM's two-year mission is to study Polar Mesospheric Clouds, theEarth's highest clouds, which form an icy membrane 50 miles above thesurface at the edge of space.

Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO)CALIPSOhttp://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/calipso/main/index.htmlCALIPSO will provide the next generation of climate observations,drastically improving our ability to predict climate change and tostudy the air we breathe.

Earth Probe Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (EP-TOMS)http://toms.gsfc.nasa.gov/eptoms/ep.htmlEarth Probe Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (EP-TOMS), along with theOzone Monitoring Instrument onboard AURA, are currently the only NASAspacecraft on orbit specializing in ozone retrieval.

Earth Observing Mission, EO-1http://eo1.gsfc.nasa.gov/Earth Observing-1 â†’As the first New Millennium Program EarthObserving Mission, EO-1 has validated advanced land imaging and uniquespacecraft technologies.

Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES)http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/goes-n/main/index.htmlGOES-N is the latest in a series of satellites that provide a constantvigil for the atmospheric "triggers" for severe weather conditionssuch as tornadoes and hurricanes.

Gravity Probe Bhttp://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/gpb/index.htmlThis mission is the relativity gyroscope experiment developed by NASAand Stanford University to test two unverified predictions of AlbertEinstein's general theory of relativity.

High Energy Transient Explorer-2 (HETE-2) Missionhttp://space.mit.edu/HETE/HETE-2 is a small scientific satellite designed to detect and localizegamma-ray bursts.

Hinode (Solar B)http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/solar-b/index.htmlA collaboration between the space agencies of Japan, the UnitedStates, United Kingdom and Europe, Hinode's mission is to investigatethe interaction between the sun's magnetic field and its corona.

Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA)http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/SOFIA/index.htmlThe Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy--or SOFIA--is anairborne observatory that will complement the Hubble, Spitzer,Herschel and James Webb space telescopes, as well as major Earth-basedtelescopes.